


Memories of Your Heart Beat

by Ninety_Six_Thousand



Category: Scrubs (TV)
Genre: Angst, I love you guys?, Like, M/M, Super Angst, im sorry?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 10:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10332950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninety_Six_Thousand/pseuds/Ninety_Six_Thousand
Summary: What's Sacred Heart's resident grump to do when his heart is shattered in a car crash? Pick up the pieces and shove them under a rug, of course.





	

John Dorian's heart pounded away on the monitor, slowly filling the void in Perry's mind. Because no matter what the tests showed, that meant he was alive. He had given Barbie half of his patients; he couldn't deal with them today. Couldn't deal with Mr. Arthurs' lower back pain, Mrs. Hernandez' stomach problems, or Ms. Trundy's flu. Not when there were far more pressing matters just ticking away at the heart monitor.

Perry sighed and ran a hand down his face, feeling the stubble there; he hadn't gone home in three days, before flipping through the test results again. Negative, negative, negative. Medically, nothing was wrong with JD. He just wouldn't wake up.

Perry slammed down the papers and walked out the door. He had other patients to attend and other things to do.

It was ten at night when he got a page from Carla, calling him down to JD's room. Even as he was walking down, Perry felt the weight of a death sentence resting on his shoulders.

He nearly missed the room in his rush; too busy clearing the lump in his throat. He had to be professional. Carla looked at him wide eyed when he walked in, and he had to push down the panic rising like bile in his throat. The heart monitor was still beating away.

"Dr. Cox, JD's heart beat has gained an irregularity. What do I do." Perry rushed to the monitor, finding JD's oxygen level and blood pressure way too low.

"Shit," he cursed aloud. Steadying himself on the side of the hospital bed, he ordered Carla, "Run a platelet count, check his surgical scar for infection, and take his temperature."

Carla nodded and ran to get supplies, leaving Perry alone with his not-dead, not-alive fiancé. He grabbed JD's hand and kissed it, promising that he would be okay. JD's hand tightened almost imperceptibly around his own, and, for the first time in a long time, Perry Cox knew he wasn't lying.

That night, Perry went home and slept.

The next morning, Carla had the test results.

"His temperature was normal, but..." Perry couldn't deal with not knowing what was wrong, not when it had to do with JD.

"But what? Spit it out, Carla." She didn't even bristle at his impatience, used to it by now.

"Dr. Cox, his platelet count was at 100, 000, and his scar seems severely infected." Perry let out a string of curses that had the nearby nurses shaking their heads in holier-than-thou judgement.

"Alright, I want you to put him on antibiotics, vasoactives, painkillers, and corticosteroids. Keep his blood pressure above 90/60 as best you can, got it?"

Carla rushed off with a hasty "yes, sir." Perry turned to a young nurse on duty.

"Tell me who operated on John Dorian." She nodded once, flipping through records as Perry's fingers tapped out an impatient dance on the counter.

"It looks like... Dr. Christopher Turk." A muscle in his jaw jumped at the name. Of fucking course.

He marched down to the surgical ward, ready to burst into a room mid operation if he had to. As it turns out, he didn't have to. Turk was leaning against a wall, slacking off in his usual manner.

He loomed over him, eyes flashing. "Get out."

Turk laughed nervously, unsure whether this was a joke. "I don't work for you, man. You can't just order me out."

He knew that was the wrong thing to say when Perry practically went red. "Listen, Ghandi, how can I put this in a way you'll understand? You're grossly incompetent. You are endangering lives here, so if you think I will not make your life here a living hell if you don't walk out within the next fifteen seconds, well, you are in for a shocker."

Turk's swallow was audible in the loud room, and Perry was pretty sure most of what he swallowed was his own pride before walking in the direction of a door. Perry let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and leaned his head against the wall, feeling the cold working its way in to numb his mind.

He just wanted to forget. Forget the gorgeous intern who had caught his eye from the day he walked in. Wanted to forget the 2.5 kids they had planned on having in a house with a white picket fence. Wanted to forget that Newbie loved appletinis and a dead, stuffed dog. Forget the night of the car crash, which shouldn't have been a big deal if he had been treated properly.

Perry Cox stood against a wall, pushing it as it pushed back, tears falling down his face, and wanted to forget.

JD died of septic shock a week later. It wasn't really a surprise for Perry; he had already started to mourn by drinking himself to oblivion.

He worked long shifts and took long days off, switching between the two when one provided insufficient distraction. It was a whirlwind of mourning and emotional egomania.

He was lying in bed, trying for alcohol induced, fitful sleep, when it came on the TV. A commercial for drug induced amnesia. He sat up, grabbing his laptop and blinking the drunkenness from his vision before typing in "drug infused amnesia." Most of the sites that came up were scams or something out of a sci-fi movie, and Perry had correct his spelling error before anything remotely helpful came up.

It was a site for some far off hospital offering hundreds of dollars for anyone willing to be a test subject. It promised selective amnesia; every memory related to one thing could be completely and totally erased. You wouldn't know they ever existed.

He sent in an application, being sure to state his profession as a doctor, hoping it would gain him credibility, and waited patiently for a response.

He waited a month, almost believing his application had been disregarded without him having been alerted, before receiving an email back. They were willing to pay him a sum of $800 if he came down for a trial and ran down all the risks of the procedure. Perry didn't really care; it was a win-win. Either he forgot about JD, or he died. There was no downside.

He flew out early Thursday morning, a sense of bittersweet remorse sinking to his bones. Once he got there, he was taken to sterile room, and they ran every test imaginable on him, making sure that he was the prime candidate.

After that part was done, a nurse in nothing but white clacked into the room, holding a syringe in her right hand. She rolled up Perry's sleeve and inserted the needle, pressing the contents into his bloodstream. The next few hours were silent bliss.

When Perry awoke, he knew where he was, but not why he was there. There was nothing in his life he would want to forget.

The nurse in white was sitting at his bedside, a pad of paper and a pen resting in her lap. She smiled at him.

"Perry Cox. How do you feel?"

"Just fucking dandy, Nurse White." A smile fought it's way onto her face because she knew exactly how he would feel; able to know that he had wanted to forget something, but having no way of remembering what it was. He would feel terrible.

"And what was your relationship with John Dorian?"

His brow furrowed as his mind searched for the name among long lost and broken fragments of memories. There seemed to be no recollection of the man in his mind, though his thoughts chased after him like a dance they were long accustomed to.

"I'm sorry, who?"

The nurse nodded, face ecstatic. But to Perry, all it felt like was a death sentence.

 


End file.
